right, middleton is a two-way all star level player. people forget about him because a) giannis and b) milwaukee, but he'd be good anywhere, and you don't just win without players at that level, imo. it's a major upset if milwaukee beats boston without him. it would be like phx beating gs without booker or something.
yeah, bucks aren't getting past boston without middleton unless giannis goes full god mode hate to say it, but i don't see any of the remaining EC teams beating them
C bag players were struggling and blaming each other early in the season. What a good coach can do for you is to turn it around with all that talent and become a contender.
Helps when you can always fall back on your defense. Offense will come and go, but you can lean on defensive effort. When you have a roster full of strong, capable defenders who are all bought in, it's amazing how a team can weather the storm. Also helps that when the storm comes, the coach isn't on a game to game contract.
Or they made the right coaching hire and made the appropriate trade deadline moves to sure up their roster.
getting derrick white for richardson was a heist. i guess they gave up a 1st, but when i saw that, i was jealous (that they had small deals that could be moved to help them improve their team). edit: alam beat me to it.
NAH ... highly overrated according to "One" and Vogel sucks because he couldn't cobble up one again or a good enough offense to compensate for it from the crap roster this year and the injuries that decimated it.
You can always be a very well-coached team if the players suck or not. Vogel was below average when it came to X's and O's. Nice guy. Average coach. Admittedly, we may just end up missing him and hire much worse.
So a lot like the Bubble Lakers: jesus. I think a healthy bubble team wins this year and last yeas sigh.
Had there been an actual off season after our 'ship, I think that team could've definitely repeated. But with that turnaround, those guys were spent. The moves made sense. Trez and DS running the two man game off the bench would've been dynamite. The promises didn't and that soured the locker room. Sprinkle in injuries (AD and Bron) and covid (Marc and DS weren't the same after) and the rest is history.
Not sure which thread this belongs to, but it seems like there's a Gaussian Distribution/Bell Curve for average age of teams and where the season is, as of today. The outliers (Grizz!) are interesting too. But first let's go back to Oct 21, when Lebron was quoted: >“The narrative about our age,” he said, “I kind of laugh at it. I actually do really laugh. I’m not just saying that.”< Now: take a look at this chart. The oldest team didn't even make the play-in. Brooklyn fell apart early. Both were embarrassments, but esp the team Lebron played for. He was wrong. He was wrong. He was wrong. When Lebron's wrong, he's epically wrong. (Apparently, he doesn't know jack s*** about chemistry, either.) Now after the sorry-assed Lakers and Nets, and "ain't gonna happen Jazz", check out the next 4 teams. It might be smart to build a roster that's not averaged age of 30, but something around 27.5 or so? League average age of teams: DAL just slightly above. The YOUNGER than league average: C-Bags and 76ers, slightly below avg. Then you jump to the youngest teams: all pretty bad...except MEM, who are basically the same age as OKC as the youngest teams in the Association. Now that's a front office, scouting, coaching, and chemistry! (We have the scouting...) Something to think about when - as this should happen - the team gets torn down and re-built after this egregiously horrid, no-good Lakers season. Still "laughing", Lebron?
Yeah, I’ve lost all confidence in Rob. Maybe he will turn it around with a miraculous summer? We’ve witnessed two summers in a row of massive over correcting on his part.
thought matthews deserved more of a shot than he got here, not sure why it went down how it did. maybe baze looks good somewhere next year?
He had an injury that slowed him down, and LeBron didn’t like him, so that’s kind of the kiss of death